It was a most glorious moment when that team of women won the Women’s World Cup.  I cannot forget the ecstatic glow on the face of Megan Rapinoe.  Yes, glorious it was.  But what brought a catch in my throat and a tear to my eye was the chant that soon broke out in the stands.  “EQUAL PAY.  EQUAL PAY.  EQUAL PAY.”  We are definitely in a new era, and none too soon.  These women have a better winning record than the men.  Their crowds bring in more money.  And had the winners of the FIFA Cup been men, each player would have received a $1,000,000 bonus instead of the measly $200,000 that each of the women received.  EQUAL PAY INDEED!

Now you’re maybe thinking, “This is all great, Fr. John.  We loved the game too, BUT what does it have to do with the story of the Good Samaritan?  And, you’re right, it’s time for a talk about equal pay.”

Well, let me tell you the connection.  You know well the story of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus is confronted by a self-serving member of the legal profession, seeking to score points.  He asks Jesus what must be done to be saved?  To inherit eternal life? It’s not like he was really interested in the answer.  It was a test to trap, to embarrass.

Jesus throws the question back at him, asking, “What does scripture say?”  The lawyer is sort of forced to answer Jesus because everyone now gathering around the exchange knows the correct answer.  They had been taught it from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper.  “You must love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus gives him an “A,” for he has answered correctly.  Prize student.  Go to the head of the class.

But unwilling to let well enough alone, the lawyer ploughs on.  “Well tell me this, smarty pants.  Just who IS my neighbor?”  Ego just doesn’t know when to quit.

And true to form, Jesus resorts to a story.  There was a businessman on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He was set upon by highway men who beat him senseless and stole everything.

While the poor fellow is lying in a ditch by the side of the road it happens that a member of the clergy should pass by.  The pastor, seeing the bloody mess, quickly steps to the other side of the road, hitches up his robes and scurry’s on by.  “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say hello, good bye.  I’m late. I’m late. I’m late.”

Next came a Levite, one who leads the singing of the services.  Let’s just say the choir director, to make this easy.  He also notices the businessman and likewise, crosses to the other side and hurriedly passes by, not wanting to get his robes soiled.  Don’t want blood on the music.  Besides, he’s a stickler for starting choir practice on time.  Late comers absolutely drive him nuts.

Finally comes by a most despised fellow.  He’s got tats from face to hands.  His clothes are ragged and he smells like he’s coming off a three-day binge.  He hasn’t had a bath since who knows when.  He sees the traveler from some distance and wonders what this is.  From afar it looked like some wounded animal.  As he draws near, his eyes flood with tears and he begins to run towards the man.  Amazing, he’s still breathing.  He knows this man.  He’s been this man.  He knows “down and out.”

Well, you know the rest of the story.  This despised fellow bandages up the bloody wounds and cleans up the businessman as best he can.  At the nearest Motel 6 he arranges for the inn keeper to feed and take care of the man’s needs, depositing what reasonably might handle the charge.   He then sets off, assuring the manager that he’ll take care of any further expenses on the flip side.

“NOW.  Who is the real, genuine neighbor?” Jesus demands to know.

And might that also be our question concerning last week’s soccer match?  When over eons of pay discrimination, who was the real neighbor to these glorious women who just won it all?  You already know in your hearts.  It was the crowd.  Their fans: all chanting EQUAL PAY to the high heavens.  These are the real neighbors, not just to these women, but to all women who have suffered the indignity of having been treated as second class when it comes to equal pay for equal work.  Why is it we pay teachers so little?  We don’t value their work.  And yet we entrust the future of our nation to them every day.  Why?  Because they’re mostly women.  Guys, it’s time to wise up.

Too often, we so individualize the gospel that we fail to take in its fulsome meaning.  Yes, sometimes it is a single individual that comes to the aid of the beaten down and oppressed, the victim if you will.  But it can also be a collective action as well.  It can be a whole bunch of great neighbors.  The sort you’d want in your neighborhood.  The kind that make it a beautiful day.  Every day.

Who cannot read the past news coverage of the horrors that Jeffrey Epstein perpetrated over the years against vulnerable girls, some as young as fourteen years old and not be repulsed?   And who cannot read of the sweetheart deal arranged by the federal prosecutor, recently the Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, and not be disgusted?  The miscarriage of justice in Florida for Epstein’s young victims astounds.  It is an offense against the Almighty and all that is decent.

It is a member of the media, you know, the FAKE news, who brings the healing light of exposure.  It was a single reporter who had the smelled the rot and brought it into the sunlight.  She was the Paul Revere of the keyboard, alerting her readers to the stench.  And she had the persistence to follow the whole sorry trail in all its lurid detail.  She was the Good Samaritan to these now-grown woman.  She brought it all to light that justice might be done.  Her truth-telling created the safe space for healing to begin – to allow these women to come forward.  To allow for a final reckoning for the perpetrators and those who covered up.  This reporter was indeed the neighbor, the real McCoy.  For all of us, thank you Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald.  You are the sort of neighbor I want in my neighborhood.  You make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood of America.  I want you writing for my morning paper.

No, she’s not a despised stranger or considered to be a heretic as was that original Samaritan – though some in the White House most likely considered her to be such.   But, as in the original story, Julie K. Brown, through her dogged reporting, has been the source of blessed healing, every bit as much as that original Samaritan in Jesus’ story.

Love of God and Love of Neighbor.  It is through faithful action, not correct belief or right theology, or any theology at all for that matter, that wholeness comes.  It’s through righteous action that we enter the realm of God – eternal life.  Rabbi Beerman used to say, “My marching feet are my prayers.”  It’s what we give our lives to that counts.

There is no right moment.  She who tarries may miss the appointed moment forever.  As my friend Vern was fond of saying, “Timing is everything.”  As in the Nike commercial, “Just DO it.”  And Julie K. Brown? – Boy howdy, did she ever do it!

That blessed restorative neighbor might be the collective action of sound public policy.  Remember President Reagan’s famous quip against government programs?  What were his “nine most terrifying words” according to him? — “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”  Well, he was wrong.  FDR showed us the power of government for the good — for a godly purpose if you will.

In fact, the government, that is, our collective action, is often what is required to bring healing in the face of systemic injustice and racism.  It is the collective will of an entire people that assumes the role of healing neighbor.  Collective action that brings restoration.

There was a heart-warming article in last week’s NY Times with the headline, “A ‘Second Chance” to Choose a Diploma Over a Rap Sheet.”  It is about Maurice Smith, a convicted murderer who spent twenty-seven years behind bars for a murder committed when he was nineteen.  And, today, now he is a member of Goucher College’s graduating class of 2019.  Yes, there he is in his cap and gown, as proud as any of the hundreds of thousands of graduates all across America who walked across that storied platform to receive their diplomas. 

And how did this amazing feat come about?  It was through the efforts of a Republican Senator in Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison.  A REPUBLICAN!   Yes!  We can work together!  Sometimes. 

It was Senator Hutchison who proposed broadening the restrictions that had been placed on Pell grants.  Through her efforts a most remarkable coalition was brought together:  far-right conservatives, the religious community, folks from the ACLU and the very liberal Center for American Progress.  This coalition managed to undo a provision in the original Pell grant authorizing legislation that had kept college from anyone with a rap sheet. 

Growing up in Harlem, Maurice Smith had spent his youth working on an increasingly long record for drug possession.  Though he had shown ability in high school, he was basically unmotivated.  And even when he had achieved the second-highest score on a state test, his vice principal accused him of cheating, only further diminishing his low self-esteem.

In 1992 Maurice had shot and killed a man breaking into a friend’s house.  He was sentenced to life, though with the possibility of parole in some distant future.  Maybe.   He spent the next years mostly sullen and angry.  In and out of solitary confinement.

President Obama introduced what became called “Second Chance Pell” in 2015.  Goucher Prison Education Partnership and the work of some sixty other colleges unlocked the door to advancement for some 12,000 prisoners.  From those serving short sentences to those on death row, the door to a future opened.  Maurice grabbed the second chance.  Before long he was reading Immanuel Kant on ethics and studying precalculus.  He loved reading Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” aloud with another inmate.

Looking back on the classes she taught, one professor, Dr. Nina Kasniunas, remarked that students like Maurice “made the pat downs, metal detectors, lack of technology and other constraints of teaching in prison worth it.”  Such students “reminded me of the power of what we do.”[1]

Maurice Smith graduated with a 3.79 grade point average.  And, with a wide smile beaming across his beautiful face, he crossed the stage and received his diploma, pumping a fist as the announcer was proclaiming, “Maurice Smith, magna cum laude.”

Maurice was released from prison two months before his graduation and presently works the graveyard shift in a Johnson & Johnson warehouse.  He reconnected with an old childhood girlfriend whom he has since married.

A person with Mr. Smith’s background we could have previously considered a throw-away – human trash.  Resentment, anger and hostility would have been our guiding attitude.  But you know the results of resentment.  It’s like drinking poison and then waiting for your enemy to die.  But what is dying is America.  As my friend in West Virginia, Sheriff Larry Palmer, says, “John, we cannot arrest our way out of these problems.”  With no hope for restoration, the only results one can expect is bad neighborhoods from coast to coast.

Just who was Mr. Smith’s neighbor?  A whole lot of people, most of whom he will never meet.  Neighbors are those who push for sound public policy and a justice system that restores.  The neighbor may be an orderly in a nursing home who, keeping vigil into the wee morning hours, clasps the hand of a dying man.  He may be that brave young boy on the playground who rebukes a bully.  The neighbor may be a medic in a war-torn land far away.  She may be that persistent doctor who struggles for days on end to properly diagnose a mysterious and obscure illness.  It may be anyone, or an entire assortment of strangers.  As we used to say in the Fair Housing movement: “Good Neighbors Come in all Colors.”

There was a traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among robbers and was left beaten half to death.  Many others passed by, ignoring the plight of the bloody wretch.  Finally, approaching, a stranger, his heart in his throat, rushed to him.  His very soul went out to the man.  He carefully bandaged his wounds and set him up on his own donkey.  At the nearest inn he provided for the man’s care, telling the innkeeper to spare no expense.

Now, who was the neighbor?  In your heart you have already answered Jesus’ question.  Your answer burns in your soul like a hot coal.

Now, go and do likewise and you, too, will pass into the mystery of eternal life.  Your answer, lived daily, is where the living Christ will meet you.  Amen.

---

[1] Erica L. Green, “A ‘Second Chance’ to Choose a Diploma Over a Rap Sheet,” The New York Times, July 9, 2019.

Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Psalm 25:1-9, Colossians 1:1-14;
 Luke 10:25-37

Year C, Proper 10 July 14, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Last year at St. Francis, it was Deacon Pat who had the honors of preaching on Trinity Sunday.  I did not envy her.  Trinity Sunday is  the most problematic Sunday in the liturgical year for a preacher.  She could have been forgiven for having had the thought, “Gee, thanks, Fr. John.”   Well, it’s Trinity Sunday once more and I’m up at bat.

To preach a sermon on Trinity Sunday without falling into one theological pitfall or another is well neigh impossible.  Today, on this Sunday, all across the nation, heresy will be compounded upon heresy as hapless clerics attempt to explicate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  I told my wife that she might as well start gathering the kindling for the heretic’s fire that will be awaiting me following the service.

Frankly, the doctrine of the Trinity is such a nuanced statement in abstruse philosophical language that only the foolish would purport to understand it.  I have to tell you now; such an understanding is certainly beyond my pay grade.  And frankly, anyone who claims to have a comprehensive and complete understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is a fake and a fraud – because what we are dealing with here is a holy mystery beyond human grasp.

Our passage from Proverbs speaks of Wisdom — She who was before all creation, She who delighted in the creation of the stars and galaxies, She who romped through all creation: When God established the heavens, I was there.”

Indeed!  “Does not Wisdom call and does not Understanding raise her voice?”  Only the fool would behold the handiwork of the marvelous web of life and declare it to be of no account. 

Of this same spirit, in the gospel of John Jesus declares, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth…”

It has been said that it is through our imagination that the Spirit has the best chance of grabbing hold of us.  The heart knows.  Pascal proclaimed that the heart has reasons of its own which reason does not comprehend.

Does not wisdom call and does not understanding raise her voice?”  Let us delight in creation and glimpse a smidgen of the Creator’s mind.  Let us delight in our brother Jesus who redeems all creation, leading us to honor the created order and our interconnection as members of the Beloved Community.  And let us be open to the promptings of the Wisdom, bearer of insight and the courage to act.  Does not Wisdom call and does not Understanding raise her voice? 

That doesn’t mean we should dispense with the Trinitarian understanding of divine reality, just because it is beyond our understanding. It is our feeble attempt to grasp a smidgen of God’s glory.  Provisional, at best.

When in doubt about things greater than myself, I believe in starting at basics.  And the basic beginning of all theology is human experience.  The experience always comes first.  Through experience the Spirit will teach and delight. 

“Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?”

When we are talking about the mystery of life – God – our understanding is always provisional.  When we stand before absolute and total holiness, we can only lapse into poetry and confession: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.”  When we are confronted with the primordial splendor of the universe around us, we can only say: “O Lord my God, how great thou art!”  Confronted by a saving grace beyond merit, we may blurt out, as did Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”  And in moments urgently demanding justice, we like the prophets of old, may burn with the Spirit of Truth.

We have known those times when our lives were confronted in the deepest way by Total Mystery and Power.  That is the experience I’m talking about.  I recall a frigid night in Alaska, sitting on my back porch.  A neighbor had called at around 11:30 that night and told me to go outside because the sky was absolutely lit up with the northern lights.  As I huddled up in my blankets on the chaise lounge, looking up at the sky, I saw the lights eerily snake across the sky, dancing and skipping.  Sometimes pink, sometimes white, or a faint blue.  Suddenly it seemed as if all the lights of heaven had gathered right over my head and then cascaded down on me as if someone were pouring a great pitcher of milk over my head.  My whole body was seized with goose bumps.  It seemed as if time stood still.  In that moment I knew I had come about as close as I ever would get to an experience of the One who stretched out the heavens and called them good. 

Through experience and imagination, the Spirit continually leads us into all Truth if we are but awake enough to see her actions.

The spirit leads us into that Connection that binds us to one another and to all creation.  Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?”  ALL THE TIME!  If we are but awake.  Yes, let those with eyes to see, comprehend, and those with ears to hear, listen.

Almost a year ago, when I was out at our farm in West Virginia for our second annual Wounded Warrior event, our younger son Christopher had admonished, “Dad we need to spend some of the money from the farm on this opioid crisis.  It’s killing people.”  I told him I would explore the possibilities.  Well, nothing but nothing was offered in Brooke County, where our farm is situated.  In the middle of the night, I believe the Spirit spoke.  And she said, “Well, it looks like you are going to have to do this yourself.”  Later, I told Christopher, “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into – a godly mess indeed.”

Yes, indeed.  Wisdom does call and Understanding does raise her voice.  And she gives us the gumption to do what must be done to knit up our human community.

When I head out to West Virginia again this Tuesday at O’Dark Early, what will get me out of bed at that ungodly hour will be those visions Wisdom planted in my mind of children raising children because their addicted parents were unable to care for them.

In the New York Times, an article on the opioid crisis told of a five-year-old left to tend his one-month-old baby brother for days because their addicted parents were nowhere to be found.  For days.  Now, I ask you – what five-year-old should ever face that burden?  How many of us at five years old could have managed that?  It is the Spirit that has seared this image into my mind and that is what keeps me going.

I read of teachers completely unprepared for such traumatized children in classrooms across our America attempting to teach these students. 

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  

To anyone with eyes to see and even an ounce of compassion the urgent message is:  DO SOMETHING.  DO SOMETHING NOW!

This last week we took note of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy.  We, and all of Europe, paused to give thanks for these brave men who raced across those beaches under withering fire to roll back the Nazi scourge.  No, freedom’s not just another word for nothing left to lose.  It is the lifeblood of what it means to be human.  On that bitter cold day, those who waded through the surf, those who swam past dead comrades floating face down in bloody foam — they were called to a higher purpose than self.  Wisdom gives us pause to honor their sacrifice.

This last Friday, six of us, representing St. Francis, spent another full day planning for a House of Hope and sober living homes right here in San Bernardino.  The Spirit compels it.  I believe our nation asks it of us with the very same urgency it required of those brave souls on D-Day, June 6^th, 1944.  To the NIMBY crowd who might fear an opioid recovery center, I would say that the patriotism required of us in this fraught hour of opioid addiction is absolutely nothing less than what was required of those who hit Omaha Beach seventy-five years ago.

As I read the testimony of those veterans, now mostly in their nineties, I am moved by the Spirit to stillness, to humility, to gratitude.  What they did in those early morning hours – we can only salute in silence.  Wisdom requires nothing less.  The men and women who stood against the threat of fascism in that hour were indeed a great generation, if not the greatest.

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  

Does she not call us to silence in honor of those men and women who liberated Europe?  Does she not call us to silence to honor those teachers who daily struggle against the greatest odds to raise up a generation of students abandoned by addicted parents?  Does she not call us to silent tears as we ponder that five-year-old boy attempting to comfort, to feed and diaper a one-month-old baby brother? 

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  O Lord, give us the insight and fortitude to do the right.  Give us the courage to admit these searing stories into our hearts.  Give us the gumption to respond.

On this Trinity Sunday let us join in heart with the words of St. Patrick’s Breastplate: 

“I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One, and One in Three.”

“I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead, his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need, the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward; the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard.”

Give us, O Lord, the nerve and care to DO SOMETHING.  For Christ’s sake.  For our sake.  And for theirs.  Amen.

Does Not Wisdom Not Call?

Year C, Trinity Sunday June 16, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Canticle 2; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Last Thursday Lawrence O’Donnell had a segment on Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway play, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  In it, Atticus Finch is the lawyer for the black defendant, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, however Judge Taylor knows that Tom is in fact innocent.  The judge implores Atticus to take the case. “In his small town in the nineteen thirties of Alabama, Atticus Finch is the lonely voice telling people we can’t go on like this.”  Jeff Daniels, portraying Finch’s address to the jury demands, “The sin, the crime against God, can’t go on like this.  We have to heal this wound or we will never stop bleeding…We can’t go on like this, we know that.”  Confronting the racism of her southern society, Harper Lee in her novel raised the voice of many, “We can’t go on like this.”  “We can’t go on like this.  That is how most Americans feel in 2019.  It is a recurring feeling in American society…” [1]

Republican congressman Justin Amash, a modern-day Atticus Finch, has warned this nation, “We can’t go on like this.” — Lies.  Deception.  Nepotism.  In calling for an impeachment investigation at a recent townhall in his district, Congressman Amash, — born of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt — is the lone voice of his tribe calling for decency and Truth.  As a nation, we can’t go on like this.  God, give us more Republicans like Justin Amash.  Though I would agree with Justin on little concerning policy, I salute him for his courage and his patriotism.   This Republican is God’s gift to our nation in this time.

The words might well be God’s — we can’t go on like this.  On Easter morning, the power of Love is again let loose in human history —  because we can’t go on like this.  God can’t go on like this.  From the Big Bang of creation, from Jeremiah thundering against the usurpations of a corrupt king, down to a miraculous birth in Bethlehem — through all ages, Grace has been God’s answer to the human plight, “We can’t go on like this.”  Truth will out.  Love will trump hate.  Grace trumps evil.  That’s Easter, folks.

So it is that Jesus imparts critical, final instructions to his little community:

The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.[2]

The Book of Acts of the Apostles is the continuation of this great love story.  Through the incredible happenings recorded in this first history of the Church, God’s intervention of Love continues.  “We can’t go on like this,” echoes down through our history — to which, Love is the answer.  In the most improbable ways.

This morning the lectionary gives us a rollicking good story of such improbable occurrences from Acts.  Few itinerant clergy have ever had the sort of excitement and misfortune as Paul and Silas.  They no sooner enter Phillippi when some addled, rag-a-muffin girl begins to follow them.  Exactly like a stray dog that once began to follow me home on the way from school — no matter what I did I could not shoo it away.  I didn’t want to walk too much further for fear the dog would become completely lost from whatever yard it had escaped.  But no matter how I yelled at it, or chased it, or stomped my feet, it wouldn’t leave.  I finally decided to stand still and ignore it.  The dog sniffed my pant leg and shoes, and after what seemed forever, it finally wandered off into the weeds.

So here is this young waif following Paul and Silas, all the time crying after them and making a nuisance of herself.  For days.  And days.  Yelling something about them being sent by the most high God.  Finally, Paul snaps.  In anger he wheels on her and casts out the evil spirit that had been troubling the girl.  Abruptly, it leaves her as she collapses to the ground. 

Her owners discover that she is now normal.  She’s of no use that they can no longer make money from the fortunes she tells. They drag Paul and Silas before the magistrate. This is certainly the point where no good deed goes unpunished.  The girl’s owner accuses Paul and Silas of being disturbers of the peace.  They are trouble makers.  One little exorcism, and what could possibly go wrong?  A lot, that’s what went wrong.  And next thing Paul and Silas are in chains and locked up in the furthermost reaches of the worst prison ever.

This place is a real hell hole.  It’s dark and dank, the smell of excrement, vomit and mold are overwhelming.  Definitely, not the Ritz.  Crowded with sweating, unwashed bodies it’s hot and humid.  Stifling.  Their new companions are less than desirable.  Downright argumentative.  Nasty wretches.  The worst thugs.  Within minutes their few possessions have been taken from them, and one prisoner has almost choked Silas to death.  Only the intervention of some huge guy speaking a language they didn’t understand had saved them. 

As they cowered in a corner, hoping to avoid notice, they eventually dozed off.  Terrible dreams.  Paul, dreamt of being back on board the little skiff that had landed them on the beach.  Gently rocking back and forth, when suddenly he came to.  Prisoners were shouting and running to and fro as the walls creaked and the floor buckled.  Silas grabbed his arm, drawing him near.  This was the end.  They commended their souls and bodies to God as the prison continued to rock.

Finally, the commotion subsided as shaking ceased.  Next, they heard the frantic guard come running into their midst.  They could barely see the sword he drew in the dim torch light. He raised it as if to impale himself, but before he could complete the fatal plunge, Paul had grabbed his arm.  The man pleaded with the two to let him die.  He would surely be held responsible for any escaped prisoners.  Death by torture would be far worse than a quick death here and now.  “You don’t know these people.”  He begged Paul and Silas to let him die.  Paul and Silas quickly looked around and a mental count revealed that, miraculously, all prisoners were accounted for.  “Don’t harm yourself, everyone’s here.  Several have injuries but no one’s missing.”

The jailer fell on his knees, grabbing Paul by the legs.  Paul and Silas began to testify to the goodness of God and gave God credit for their preservation.  Other prisoners began to gather around the two men and the jailer as Paul continued his witness.  Late into early morning Paul related the story of Jesus of Nazareth and how misguided men had killed him, but that the story had not ended there.  Out of the tragedy of a shameful death an incredible power had been let loose — a revolutionary Spirit of Love binding all together as one.  A new community. That is why Paul and Silas had not escaped and had pleaded with the others to remain.

That night the jailer took Paul and Silas to his house, where by candlelight he related to his wife, servants and children the wondrous events that had transpired.  He had the two men’s wounds cleansed and bandaged.  By this time all present were asking how they could be part of this miraculous family of Jesus’ followers.   On the spot, water was brought and all were baptized into a new way of life.  And that early morning the Church grew by just a little bit more.

Through gracious acts of love and self-sacrifice, the community of Jesus followers attracted more and more followers.  Soon, the entire town.  That all might be one!

And now, here we are.  This very same power of Love has been let loose down through the years and centuries – though we fail to recognize its origin.   This is the same Power that drove the Renaissance and Enlightenment.  The same Power behind and within the idea of our modern democracies.  It is born of the idea that everyone counts and that we are all bound together – that all are sacred vessels of One Divine Love.  That we all might be one!  Yes, even with the created order – thrips and opossums.

Even when we lose the vision and our unity is shattered, Jesus prays in the wreckage that we all may be one.  Even when the operating ethic is me first and if anyone else survives it’s mere coincidence — Jesus yet prays that we all may be one.  Love is the answer.

My Quaker friend Anthony has a bumper sticker on his car that proclaims, “War is not the answer.”  The imp in me always wants to subvocalize, “Well, what’s the question?”  Actually, it’s about the answer.  Love is the answer — if anyone cares to know.  Love is the answer.

The other day on the PBS Newshour, Judy Woodruff had a segment born of just such understanding.  It featured a Sacramento restauranteur who had become quite distressed over the several suicides of some of his colleagues.  This tragedy jolted his mind to the realization that the restaurant business is extremely stressful.  We can’t go on like this.  That was his realization.  We can’t go on like this.  And someone needs to care.  Love is the answer.  In my business we are family!

Amidst all the hubbub of his busy kitchen, he had not taken notice as to how his staff was coping.  He had no idea how his employees were doing.  Or not doing.

Who had had a girlfriend or a lover breakup, or an ill child?  Who was under financial stress or had received an eviction notice?  Who had come to work addicted or depressed?  He just didn’t know.  No one probably knew.  But these twenty-some people were his family.  He did care about them.  Love is the answer, but there was no time for that.  Not in a hectic kitchen or on a busy floor.

After talking with some psychologists and other helping professionals, he instituted a program among his employees called, “I’ve Got Your Back.”  Using a system of color-coded cards that folks drop into a box as part of their shift check-in, someone would know.  He now had an idea of how many had come to work sad or under stress.  How many were happy, or dealing with some really bad stuff? 

He also had some staff in each shift trained as peer counselors – people who were safe to talk to.  People to share even the worst news or feelings with.  These were employees trained to read body language, to sense who was not okay.  This man’s restaurant now, in fact, has begun to behave as a caring family.  Yes, Love is the answer.  You know that, just to hear his employees talk about what has changed at work.

This restaurant owner’s goal is to spread his program to restaurants all across the country.  But why only restaurants?  Why stop there?

It is my hope that we import this same gracious gift to House of Hope – San Bernardino.  We bring it to our staff.  Love is the answer, just as it was in that dank prison cell over two thousand years ago.  Born of deep subterranean tremors, Christ’s church will continue to grow in love.  Even on an intense recovery ward.

Love is the answer to the despair of “We can’t go on like this.” 

At St. Francis we gather weekly because we know that we can’t possibly go on like this.  No more.  The world can’t go on like this.  Our country can’t go on like this.  We gather to remember and to remind one another around this table that Love is the answer.  Self-giving, sacrificial love.  Love powerful enough to interrupt busy date books and impact checkbooks.  We come to remind one another that we don’t have to go on like this — a Power greater than ourselves has our back.  Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey – we’ve got your back.  That’s Jesus’ story and he’s sticking to it.  So are we.  Amen.

---

[1] Lawrence O’Donnell, “The Last Word,” MSNBC (May 30, 2019), Jeff Daniels plays Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

[2] John 17:20-26

Year C, Easter 7, June 2, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

We live in an age of discontinuity.  The old verities that once guided former generations are now up for grabs.  The traditional jobs that provided a lifetime of security are in short supply while the gig and sharing economy has for many been a race to the bottom.  No benefits.  No pension and no living wage.  Bill Clinton’s mantra for success – play by the rules and work hard these days does not necessarily guarantee much of anything.  If you are born poor, the overwhelming odds are that you will die poor.  Churches that once dominated the skylines in our large cities now stand mostly empty on Sunday mornings.

Change.   Change is the one constant.  And Love is the other constant.  Hear some of the final farewell words of our Lord from the gospel of John:

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love can be a soft mushy word.  Lots of feeling but little substance.

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.”  Certainly, it is essential that the Church, the Body of Christ be one of affection and deep concern for one another.  But too often, being human beings, we so invariably fall short of that.  Bickering and snark can rule and destroy the community.  Paul in Corinthians, complains about the strife that has consumed that community over speaking in “tongues.”  Strife consumed the early church over the inclusion of, and table fellowship with, the Gentiles, the so called “uncircumcised.” 

So, what does this Love look like?  It is something that goes beyond tribe and kin.  Let me tell you what this Love looks like

The other night we had at Pilgrim Place two of the great hymn writers of the church, Jim and Jean Strathdee.  They were our musicians at the church I served in the upper Mojave Desert, Ridgecrest United Methodist Church.  Yes, I was under Methodist management at the time.

As part of our vespers service that evening Jean told the story of her mother, Inez Stevens.  Early in their marriage Jean’s father was in the navy.  Lou was stationed near Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it on December 7^th, 1941.  For six months she didn’t know what had happened to her husband.  There was absolutely no word.  In the meantime, Inez was a teacher in the San Joaquin Valley of California.  Many of her students were Japanese.  She loved those children like they were her own.  Many of those families were completely mortified at what their home country had done.  Their shame was more than they and their children could bear.  Yet, when those families were deported to concentration camps, Inez and Lou made arrangements to safe-keep the farms of two of those families during the length of their internment.  After the war, upon their return, she and her husband turned the farms back to them.  This was a gift freely given. 

Fast forward many years to the memorial service held for Inez.  One of the largest contingents at the service were her former Japanese students.  They had never forgotten that bond of affection and the righteous deed that Inez and Lou had done for their community.  By far the largest amount for a fund in her memory came from the Japanese community.  Friends, this is what Love looks like.

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” 

What does Love look like?  Paul says that this Love is patient and kind.  It does not insist upon its own way.

I have lately had to take St. Paul’s tutorial on this love.  On every trip to West Virginia.  Early on, our fellow, Scott, who takes care of the farm and now is organizing for House of Hope – Ohio Valley, cautioned me, “You know, John, a lot of these people here voted for Trump.”  And those of you who know me, know that I can be as rabid a partisan as any.  I’m definitely not a fan.

Let me tell you what I am learning about what this Love looks like.  On my part, it has meant a lot of listening.  It means deeply hearing the struggles of many working in an economy of low wages, part-time jobs and no health insurance.  No retirement package.  It means deeply hearing the struggles of families caught up in addiction to painkillers and meth.  It means hearing the despair of communities that have lost the next generation for lack of employment.

And in the end, I know exactly why they voted for Trump.  In my heart, I cannot blame them.  I understand.  Many feel as though this nation has abandoned and disrespected them.  Left them behind.  Let me tell you what Love looks like.  It means the willingness to feel, and take into our being this pain.  This is what I’m learning.  This is what that sort of Love looks like.

So, when I head out to West Virginia, when it comes to politics, I have to say that I’m agnostic.  The only important thing is the work we are doing to combat opioid addiction.  That’s it.  Nothing else counts.  I’m learning that that’s what Love looks like.  “Love one another.”  This is the listening we will have to do as we approach the 2020 election if we are going to have half a chance of making our democracy work.  We are going to have to find those areas where we can work together and let all else rest.  And I’ll try to be on my good behavior.

What does Love look like?  It looks a lot like the effort a group of us put in a week ago at the Cathedral Center.  Six of us represented St. Francis at the Episcopal Enterprises Academy.  For most of us, it meant getting up early, early to brave the 10 Freeway morning rush hour traffic.  It meant spending a good eight hours in class.  It meant homework.  It meant digging in and really working on what our mission might be here in San Bernardino and how we might financially support it with some entrepreneurial activity that would pay the bills but also benefit those we are called to serve.  That’s what Love looks like.  It can involve tedium and some stress.  It isn’t always fun.  It’s often hard work.  And sometimes even drudgery.

In the Inland Empire, in San Bernardino, as in West Virginia, many feel left behind in this new gig economy.  Blight and crime infest many neighborhoods.  Wages are stagnant and our homeless population grows.  Entire families are destitute on the streets.

The other Sunday, at the conclusion of coffee hour, a young fellow came into our midst.  He was a mute and could only with great difficulty understand what was spoken to him.  But we could communicate through writing.  I can imagine how embarrassing it must have been for him to ask for food for his family.  No, he didn’t want cash.  He only wished for someone to take him to Food for Less and buy the few items on his list his wife had given him.  I had no difficulty whatsoever understanding when he mouthed the words several times, “Thank you.”  Yes, Love looks like food.  This man is no longer a stranger.  He’s our brother in Christ.  That’s what love looks like.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

All the talk of the saints gathered up in the bosom of God — all the talk of God wiping away every tear – all the talk of making all things new – it all rings pretty shallow if folks don’t see any signs of newness and hope right here and now.  They’ve got to see and taste it.

As Mark Twain once quipped that would be a little easier to believe in the possibility of redemption if the redeemed looked a bit more redeemed.

Friends, you and I are, most likely the only copy of gospel Love most people will ever see.  As has been said, you and I are the hands and feet of Christ.  You and I are the mind of Christ.  You and I are the beating heart of the gospel Love we proclaim each and every Sunday.

Let us give thanks for those blessed exemplars like Inez and Lou Stevens who have paved the way, who have shown us what this Love looks like.  Let us learn for our own time the new duties and the sublime joys of this gospel Love.

This Sunday after church, I’ll be with Nan Self, a mentor and part of the campus ministry team that is responsible for me even being in the church.  Today Nan celebrates her ninetieth birthday.  She is another blessed disciple who has also left it all on the field.  Through her ministry over the years, the whole body of Christ has been built up and glorified.  Happy birthday, Nan.  Thanks be to God for your example of gospel Love.  Nan, you are what Love looks like.

What does this Love look like?  Let me tell you what it looks like.  It looks like a community gathered around this altar remembering a teacher, a friend, a pioneer, who says to those assembled.  “This bread is my body broken for you.  This cup is the cup of the new covenant poured out for you and for all.  Broken and poured out for the knitting up of this broken world.  This one Lord left it all on the field.  And in his fellowship is our most exquisite joy and purpose.  Amen.

Year C, Easter 5, May 19, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm148; Revelation 21:1-6; Luke 13:31-35

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

I have a wonderful friend in Wellsburg who runs what our House of Hope team thinks is the best restaurant in town.  Nicol and her husband are the owners of The Dovetail – dovetail as in wood working.  It is a joint that is made up of interlocking fingers if you will.

Nicol has quite a bit of experience running kitchens, having managed them in several large institutional settings.  She and her husband Rob are a couple of the hardest working folks you’ll ever meet.  She is up early, early in the morning to make sure breakfast is going smoothly.  The Dovetail is a place of wonderful dishes, and in the morning the oatmeal covered with baked apples is to die for.  Along with the coffee.

Unfortunately, Wellsburg isn’t large enough to support the Dovetail the way it should.  As hard as Nicol works, she and Rob barely keep their heads above water.

This is the story of many people these days.  Yes, the economy is booming and unemployment is at its lowest since the late 60’s.  But most workers have seen far too little to show for their efforts.  So it is with many of our clergy.  Pastoral work is a lot like housework.  It’s never done.  Yet in an age that sees less and less need for what the church offers, the long hours most pastors put into their work seem to bear little fruit.

In our gospel selection from John, Peter and some of the disciples have gone out fishing.  Maybe, after the utter disaster of the past few days, they had given up on the disciple thing.  Maybe they were just at odds about what to do.  Anyway, Peter had announced, “I’m going fishing.”  The others decide to tag along.  But they catch nothing.  I have certainly been on plenty of fishing trips like that!

The fishing business has been so unrewarding that now they’re fishing at night to try and survive.  And for all their efforts, in spite of their all-nighter, they’ve caught nothing.  That’s when a stranger a ways off on the shore calls out to them, “Hey, guys!   Have you caught anything?”  Who is this busybody?  What does he care?  “No,” they have to admit.  For all their effort, they’ve come up empty handed.  There’s not even a single catfish in the net.  Zip.  Nada.

At this point everything changes — this intruder has the nerve to tell them how to do their job?  “Try casting your net on the other side of the boat.”  Yeah.  Right.  Sure.  But, having nothing to lose, that’s exactly what they do. Maybe it’s an authority they sense in his voice.  And surprise upon surprise.  The net is now so full of fish they can barely pull it back in.  About this time, they recognize that in the guise of a stranger, they’ve encountered the risen Christ.  And the confirmation is abundance. All in all, one hundred fifty-three fish.  But we’ll get back to that number later. 

How often it is that strangers on the shore alert us to God’s abundance.  Alert us to the presence of divine possibility.

Many of the people I’ve encountered in my trips to West Virginia, though they live sparse lives, experience an amazing abundance in spiritual gifts.  The comradery around a campfire, in family connections and in community gatherings — there’s an abundance that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.  Friendships are deep and rich. And church is often at the center of lives that are well-lived.  In new found friends, over and over I’ve been alerted to an abundance I would have overlooked. This has been the case with our Wounded Warrior project we hold on our farm.

Our little church of St. Francis may never reach its glory days of the 60s and 70s, but we do have an abundance of joy in one another.  We have abundance in the vision of reconfiguring our campus for mission, as we seek to walk with the addicted and homeless. 

Abundance comes in guises we often fail to recognize.  It’s not necessarily about number, what can be measured.  It’s about the quality and the timelessness of events.  The Bible calls this quality Kairos time.  The fitting season – when time is right.  Fishing is like that.

There’s the old saying that any days spent fishing are not deducted from one’s allotted lifespan.  Days spent fishing are days of “miracle and wonder,” as Paul Simon put it.

When I was in about the second grade my family went on a summer trip to Ensenada, Mexico.  I was somewhat upset because the trip was during the time of my birthday.   I was very disappointed that I wouldn’t have any friends over for a birthday party.  I remember my parents assuring me that we would do something special for the day anyway.  They wondered what I might like to do.  I hadn’t the slightest idea.  What did I know?  I had never been here before.  I didn’t know anyone here.  It seemed that my parents had spent most of the time during the drive down in an ugly family fight.  I was most unhappy.

As we drove through the town of Ensenada, we passed all these fishing boats and rows and rows of fishing poles with signs advertising fishing trips.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do for my birthday.  I wanted to go fishing.  My mom knew nothing of fishing and somehow, between my mom and dad, it was decided that he would be the one to take me out on a charter boat.

I remember waking very early.  It was cold and foggy as we walked along the beach front.  I could taste the salt air.  When we approached the boat, the smells of diesel and fish also permeated my senses.  It was an old wooden boat that creaked as it moved with the gentle swells in the harbor. 

Several of the crewmen spoke English and, as I was the youngest on board, they adopted me as their mascot.

As we were leaving the harbor that morning, I remember my dad sternly warning me, “Don’t look down at the water; look at the horizon.  That way you won’t get seasick.”

It seemed that it took forever to get out to the fishing area.  On the way, we stopped by a boat and picked up a load of little fish that we would use for bait.  By the time we had arrived at the fishing grounds, my dad was not feeling too well.  He said that he was going into the cabin to lie down. 

The deck hands helped me bait my hook and showed me how to cast out from the boat.  Within a very short time I had caught my first fish.  They helped me get it over the rail of the boat and off the hook.  It was the biggest fish I had ever seen as it flopped about on the deck.  And to think, I had actually caught it.  Looking back on the episode now, I realize that it was only a medium sized sea bass.  Probably not that big at all.  But to a young fellow, it looked like it might have hooked Moby Dick or Jaws..

We continued to fish into the afternoon.  I caught fish after fish.  By the time we headed back into the harbor, I had quite an impressive gunny sack full of them.  It was so full that I couldn’t begin to lift it.

As we arrived back at port, I saw my mom and brother waving at the railing of the pier.  All I could do was to point to the huge sack of fish.  About this time, Dad appeared from the cabin of the boat.  By his acrid breath I could tell that he had been seasick.  He really didn’t look too good.  As a big orange sun was setting into the sea, I rushed up the gangway to Mom with Dad trailing somewhat unsteadily behind struggling with my sack of fish.  The first thing I blurted out was, “Mom, Dad didn’t look at the shoreline!”  Even, Dad, woozy as he was, cracked a smile.

Together we all walked back home.  For that moment we were a happy family.  It was the best birthday ever.  Nearing our cottage, we passed what seemed to be some shacks.  Even as young as I was, I realized that these were a pretty poor houses, not at all like ours back home.  I had bad feelings about it.  I remember my mom and dad talking to one of the guys standing out in front in a language I didn’t understand, and pointing to the sack of fish.  I was upset when they then gave away almost all of the fish.

Coming up to the patio out in front of our place, my dad explained that these people didn’t have much and their families would certainly appreciate the fish.  Besides, we could only eat a few of them.  No use wasting them.  My mom didn’t like them at all because she said that they smelled up the place.  To my mind, they were they were the most delicious fish I had ever eaten.

Later on, I came to realize what a gift it really was for Dad to have taken me.  Now I, like him, only have to experience the boat going up and down about three times before I’m hanging on the rail feeding the fish.  He knew that he was going to be absolutely miserable and yet he took me anyway.  I now realize what a sacrifice that was for him.

One of the lessons that I have taken from this first fishing trip is that God’s abundance is seen in the sacrifices we make for one another, the big and small ways we go out of our way just because we know that the gift of time or presence will be important to another person. We are Christ to one another in this gift of self.

That day, though I didn’t have the words for it then, I knew that I and my family had been blessed in a way I would never forget.  Life was full and overflowing with goodness.  Abundance.

In our Gospel story from John, we have a continuation of appearances by the Resurrected Christ.

In the risen Christ we experience forgiveness as well.  Why is it that Peter is asked three times if he loves the Lord?  It is to undo the three-fold denial at Jesus’ trial.  Peter is now reclaimed and sent out as an embodiment of the same Easter abundance.

Likewise, as we experience forgiveness for the daily stupid and carless things we do and say, we are restored to gospel usefulness.  Abundance brought so often by a stranger on the shore of our life.  Christ in the guise of a stranger, an interloper.

In the abundance of fish, the Beloved Disciple recognizes the man.  “It is the Lord.”

The net is so full of fish, 153 in all – large fish – that all the disciples come out to the boat to haul it in.  When they get back on land, they saw the charcoal fire with fish and bread roasting on it.  Jesus invites them to also bring over some of the fish they have just caught.

This is a story about abundance and sharing.   John wants his community to know that they will recognize the Risen Christ in the abundance God provides when life is shared.  That’s it.

I could go on at great length about all the theories of the 153 fish.  Looking at the commentaries, there are all sorts of speculations about the significance of this number.  But, I fear, you might have as much trouble staying awake hearing about them as I did just in reading about them.

So, if anyone asks you about the meaning of the 153 fish, just tell them, “Fr. John had nothing profound to say.”  Our salvation does not depend on knowing the significance of this number.

However, John in his Gospel has something most profound to say about abundance, and this revelation has a lot to do with our salvation.   Christians, when gathered together, will experience the Risen Lord in the daily abundance that God provides for us when it is shared.  In the sharing we will know his real and living presence. 

When we gather around this altar, let us remember this teaching.  Food is basic.  It is to be shared.  It is our very Lord who said, “I am food.”  In the sharing of this bread broken and cup poured out, he is present to bless and encourage us. 

In a similar way long ago, I experienced God’s goodness to me on my birthday – in the abundance of a monstrous gunny sack full of fish that were shared with those who had none.  (There had to have been 153 of them!) And in the abundance of love that permeated our family dinner that evening, I now know Christ was present.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Easter
Strangers on the Shore

Acts 9:1-6, [7-20]; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14;
John 21:1-14

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
May 5, 2019

You’ve certainly experienced a traffic jam caused by lookie-loos gawking at an accident in the opposing lane.  Of course, you have.  You live in Southern California, or in some other place similarly overcrowded.  Drives you nuts – unless you’re the one doing the looking.  As you approach the scene of the accident, there’s the patrol officer waving a flashlight saying to drivers as they all slow down to stare, “Move along, folks.  Just move along.  Nothing to see here.”  And as you pass, she gives you the evil eye of consternation.

That is the word from the empty tomb this morning.  “Nothing to see.”  Why do you look for the living amongst the dead?  How often do we Christians find ourselves lost and wandering about amongst that which does not give life?

I came across an intriguing book a couple weeks ago, The Grave of God.  What a title.  I wondered if this was a reprise of the Death of God theology of the 60s or what.  It was a much more damning indictment than anything out of that period.  It concerned the tendency of the church for self-preservation over mission.  For safety over risk.  For condemnation over liberation.  For death over Resurrection.[1]  The church has used God to justify oppression, wars and patriarchy.  God has been used to justify narrow partisan and parochial interests.

When I was a small boy, I wondered why it was that part of the family wouldn’t talk about Aunt Donna.  It was as if she were dead.  It was only after I had become a teenager that I discovered the real story.  Aunt Donna, after losing her husband Frank, went into a deep depression.  Her life literally fell apart.  It was only when a Catholic friend reached out to her and took her to church that Aunt Donna got her footing.  She found such a nurturing community that she converted from the Christian Science faith of my grandmother.  She ultimately became a nun, working as a nurse with the Sisters of St. Joseph in Tacoma, Washington.  I’m sure her work was a blessing to those hospital patients, but to us she was as if dead.  We dared not speak her name or we were hushed.  In retrospect, it was very hurtful, especially to us children.  So much hate.  And this is what the church taught?  Such vindictiveness is indeed the grave of God and the tomb of all that is holy.  The Resurrection Spirit is like the wind.  It blows where it will and it liberated our Aunt Donna from that dark cloud  of depression over her head. Yes, it did! 

Today, we rejoice that these narrow denominational tombs are empty.  Alleluia.  We Christians are a Resurrection people.  We live not in the House of Fear but in the House of Love as my friend Ed Bacon would put it.  I saw that one of his internet friends had responded with the reminder, “The House of Love has room for all, and we need to remember to leave the door unlocked and porch light on for all who want to move in.”

Easter is about Resurrection.  It does us no earthly, or heavenly good for that matter, to have ideas and opinions about that empty tomb unless we are moved by Resurrection Power to leave the tomb and beginning to live as a renewed people. 

Resurrection breaks into our lives sometimes when the Spirit grabs our funny bone. Humor allows the dreary stuff of life to fall into perspective.  Humor is some of the best Resurrection medicine.  Resurrection humor blasts through self-absorption and anger, through custom and the walls of clan and tribe.  It liberates us from the tomb of self-importance.  Nothing to see in there, folks.  Nothing to see.

Ed, in his book, 8 Habits of Love,[2] tells the story of one of his mentors, Rabbi Friedman.  The rabbi recounts a time when his son had to go to court for rear-ending a woman’s car on his way to work.  By the time the father and son had arrived at court the other driver was already there in the courtroom, furiously pacing back and forth.  When she noticed the two, her look became a hateful scowl.  She wanted the judge to throw the book at this young boy.  The rabbi begun to sense that the judge and spectators were becoming caught up in the tension filling the courtroom.  In fact, he himself was getting caught up in it.  As Ed reports the scene, “…he began to sweat; he was getting angrier and angrier.  His son looked at him with pleading eyes.  Everything seemed to be getting out of control.  The rising panic was infectious and debilitating.”

The rabbi moved away from the others to get some perspective and to calm himself, and when he returned, he heard the judge asking him what he as a father thought would be a reasonable punishment.  In an instant that blessed liberating spirit, might we even say that Resurrection Spirit spoke through the humor of the words that escaped his lips: “Life imprisonment,” was the judgement of the father. “This is surely the worst crime a young man can commit – to have a fender bender against this woman.”

The judge and the lawyers burst out into laughter.  The woman’s demeanor began to change as she, too, began laughing.  Holy laughter brought them forth from the tomb in which the proceedings had become mired.  Holy laughter, Resurrection laughter was the medicine which restored reason.  And Ed reports that all went home without any dire consequences.  A Jewish rabbi and Resurrection?  Why not?  Was it not also a Jewish rabbi who burst forth from that tomb on the first Easter morning?  Resurrection cannot be contained in any one religious tribe.  It bursts through whatever tomb in which we contrive to stuff it. 

The power of Christ has been let loose throughout the humane values of not only the West, but it has infected all who have absorbed those values, even though they are adherents of other faiths.  Or of no faith.  The power of Christ is now so diffuse throughout the world that most, even professing Christians, fail to recognize its origin.  Take the power of liberated women.  Yes, it took us Episcopalians a long time to get there.  To our shame, women could not be deputies at General Convention until 1970, when twenty-eight women delegates were finally welcomed to General Convention by President of the House of Deputies, John Coburn.  Yes, Resurrection!  Even in our beloved Episcopal Church.  Male chauvinism is a dark, empty tomb.  Nothing there for anybody.   Absolutely, nothing!

The Church, in John’s account of that first Easter morning, reports trouble with some Pesky Women who beat the men to the Easter miracle.  And then there’s that foot race over which man gets to be there first, as if the women’s testimony accounted for nothing.  This whole episode is a reflection of the argument over who really counts in the church.  It’s all about church politics.  The Resurrection message could easily have been lost in this church skirmish.  And so often it is.  And those Pesky Women?  We men eventually wised up to God’s Resurrection Power residing in their persistence and in their glorious gifts.  In the end, we men had both the good sense and the grace to get out of their way.  And what an Easter blessing these women have been for our church, both as lay and ordained! 

The infection of empowerment has now spread to the women of Afghanistan.[3]  After the most horrific abuse under the rule of the Taliban and ISIS, these women are now rising to their full potential.  They will not be suppressed. Not any longer. Resurrection, I say.

In The Daily Good there was a story about a girl, Hassanzada, who at the age of sixteen becomes a news presenter, the first woman to do this in Afghanistan.  In her hometown of Mazar-i-Sharif such a notion would have been dismissed as a childish dream.  Yet, here she was, broadcasting the news. 

Today Hassanzada is now twenty-five and runs her own magazine, Gellaria.  Sort of like Vogue.  And to think that just a few years ago, women were not allowed to leave their homes alone or permitted to attend school.  Girls who had the temerity to go to classes were sometimes the victim of acid attacks by the Taliban.  Under ISIS, girls had been sold into sexual slavery, considered as mere animals with no agency of their own.  And now, even with the Taliban gone, the oppressive cultural norms internalized by many women remain as a stale tomb imprisoning any aspirations of personal fulfilment.

It has not been easy for Hassanzada.  Shortly after she appeared on television, she began receiving threats from the Taliban and their warlords.  The elders of her own village were furious that a woman dare have her face publicly shown on television.  There were angry letters, threatening phone calls and bullying.  Yet she kept going to work, day in and day out.  She persisted.  Yeah, one of those sorts of women.   Hassanzada is that beloved angelic messenger shouting to the women of Afghanistan, “Move along, ladies.  Nothing here for you in this Taliban tomb.  Only the death of your dreams.  Absolutely, nothing to see here.  Nothing for you.” 

Hassanzada knew that if she gave into this intimidation, every girl in Afghanistan would suffer a diminished future.  The Taliban mentality would have won. “If we quit every time we are threatened or attacked, then women would never get anywhere. We have to be fearless,” she insists.[4]

Even tragedy did not deter her.  One day her younger brother was attacked and brutally beaten, almost to death.  Yes, the family decided to move to Kabul for their safety, but her parents continued to support her work and aspirations. 

What has enraged Hassanzada more than the violence directed at her and her family has been the complacency of so many Afghan women and their servile acquiesce to the Taliban attitude that they are nothing.  Today she continues in her media work to encourage young girls to dream dreams like she had.

The Resurrection Spirt has surely burst forth from the Taliban and the ISIS tomb of dead ideology and dead male privilege.  There is no stuffing it back in.  Don’t even try.  There’s a whole new generation of Pesky Women out there bringing new life to Afghanistan.  God bless ‘em.  Men, let’s face it.  You cannot stifle these women.  So, join them.  Join them and become a part of the Resurrection of Afghan women.  Become a part of a resurrected Afghanistan.

This Resurrection Morning, we celebrate the bursting forth of new life at St. Francis and in our beloved Episcopal Church.  We are so fortunate to have a bishop like John Taylor who has refused to sell off any more church properties, but insists that we, the church, discover our new ministry when the neighborhood changes, when the world thinks it no longer has any use for the Gospel Message in this so-called modern age.

A number of us will be attending the Episcopal Enterprise Institute, training to learn how to reconfigure our ministry in such a way that it will serve the present needs of our neighborhood on Sterling Ave.  We are an irrepressible Resurrection People. 

The watchword of House of Hope is this:  Instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help them repair their future.  That is Resurrection theology in action.  No dank, smelly tombs for us!  And addiction is the worst sort of tomb.

This Good Friday I so missed our sister Joyce Marx at our Stations of the Cross service.  I still remember following her last year as we processed from station to station.  For those who didn’t know Joyce, she was one of the founders of St. Francis.  And let me tell you this.  She and her husband Gene did not sweat and toil all those years for us to give up.  At St. Francis we’re just getting started.  Hold my beer and watch this!  Or diet soda, if you prefer.

Move along.  Move along, nothing to see here in any old dark and smelly tomb.  Friends, the action’s out there — Resurrection action bursting forth uncontained.  Matthew tells us that following his initial appearances, Jesus went on before them back to Galilee, went on before them, even back to Sterling and Citrus, San Bernardino – back to the world of hustle and bustle, the world both of tears and unrestrained joy.  Back to the sometimes pedestrian world where we’re daily empowered to live Resurrection. To paraphrase David Letterman, Easter has no “off” switch. 

Christ has risen.  (He is risen indeed).   Happy Easter.  Amen.

---

[1] Robert Adolfs, The Grave of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 26ff.

[2] Ed Bacon, 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind (Boston: Grand Central Life & Style, 2012),

[3] Kiran Nazish, “Afghan Women Making their Voices Heard by Launching their Own Companies,’ The Daily Good, April 27, 2018) http://www.good.is/features/media-women-in-afghanistan-gellara-magazine-zan-tv

[4] Kiran Nazish, op. cit.

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43;
John 20:1-18

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
April 21, 2019

Palm Sunday

The first stories I remember hearing from my dad as a young boy were about the Hatfields and the McCoys in Kentucky and West Virginia.  These families had been feuding for generations.  The thing had gone on for so long that people don’t rightly recollect how it got started.  Some say it was because the McCoys supported the Union and the Hatfields were Confederates.  But it could have been McCoy’s belief that a Hatfield had stolen one of his hogs sometime back in 1878.  As I said, the details seem to have gotten lost in the mists of history.

But once it got going, the feud was fought back and forth across the West Virginia/Kentucky state line for several generations.  In 1888 several Hatfields were arrested and stood trial for the murder of two of Randall McCoy’s children. An aspect of that case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.  These were two of the most feuding families that ever lived according to my Dad.  And the only thing that ever came out of it was death and more death, and vows of revenge and tears of loss.

Paul counsels a better way.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ.  This is a far, far better way.  That was also Dad’s advice.  Yes, you could be right, in fact, dead right.  A slight, a harsh word — let it go.  Just let it go.  Keep on walking.

Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  What makes this passage so annoying and difficult is that we human beings aren’t built that way.  It’s not our nature to let it go.  It goes against the grain. Our natural tendency is to put up our dukes.  We’re going to settle this after school is the taunt. 

Put up your dukes on the playground always won out over any silly notions about forbearance and the mind of Christ.  Any boy talking such nonsense would have become a laughing stock.  He wouldn’t have dared show his face in the classroom after recess.  Not one of us sixth grade boys had the spiritual maturity to even remotely have considered such an option.  It was “me first and if anyone else survives, it’s mere coincidence.” So, put up your dukes, you yellow bellied coward was the choice de jour out on the basketball court.

Yet, Palm Sunday is a procession into humility.  It is a drama of emptying out — setting aside one’s own prerogatives, one’s rights.  That is the mind of Christ.  To go to Jerusalem is to willingly enter the pain and suffering of the world. 

This was the choice in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. “He set his face towards Jerusalem,” is how the story goes.  As the Jewish Passover approached there were two parades in the city that morning.

According to Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their book, The Last Week,[1]  the choice was between a humble rabbi with a message of peace and rebirth and the full might of the Roman army.  That morning before the Passover festivities, imperial Roman legions marched into Antonia Fortress to ensure law and order during the Jewish high festival.

Those of the Roman procession wore highly polished armor breastplates that glistened in the sun.  Upon mighty steeds and with banners held high they represented all the power and might of Rome.  They were in control.  These centurions were there to prevent the unrest that in the past had punctuated other Passovers.  In the last major Passover unrest in around 4 BC, over 2000 of those who had taken part of the rebellion in Jerusalem were crucified.  Fearsome iron swords and sharpened spears, gleaming helmets and imperial banners carried high aloft were the guarantee that there would be no repeat.  Drummers beating out the cadence announced to all Jerusalem that Caesar was in charge and would brook no opposition.  This is the parade of Pax Romana. The Iron Fist.

That Passover there was a second procession on the opposite side of the city.  This was a procession of a little-known rabbi and his followers from the countryside.  His reputation as a noted teacher and healer had proceeded him.  Some thought that he might be the anointed one come to rid their land of the despised Romans.  Some thought he might be the one to herald in a new age spoken of by the prophet Isaiah – a new age when the crippled would be healed, the blind would see and there would be an abundance of food and drink for all.  People joined the band waving palm branches and little children skipped and ran along side.  But for Jesus this was no picnic.  This was deadly serious business.

It was imperial might arrayed against vulnerability.  Roman armor up against one who whose message was of a new way of living.   Not born of the brutality and force of arms, but a kingdom of the heart, a kingdom of spirit. A kingdom where women had a say and children were valued for themselves.  A kingdom meant to include all.  A regime where the least are first and the hungry are satisfied.

We have such difficult time understanding that all means all.  We still flock to might and prestige.  We honor the prerequisites of tribe and clan. Even after two thousand years and we still don’t get it.

The interesting truth is that one can still encounter the humble followers of that simple teacher while Roman might seems to have evaporated into history.  Empires come and go, yet the mind of Christ still beckons.

Let this same mind be in you.  Do not be swayed by the fickle crowd as variable as the high desert winds that blow first this way and then that. 

To enter the gates of Jerusalem is to enter the pain of any of our large urban areas. It is to encounter the despair of emptied out rural America.  For the church, this means setting our own agenda aside and opening ourselves up to what we hear and see.  That is the mind of Christ that will bring our own healing.  That is the mind, out of death that brings life.

Mike Kinman tells of entering the pain of St. Louis and being confronted by the anguish of Black Lives Matter.  He tells of an experience five years ago, yet still as vivid in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. 

“I feel you. Do you feel me?”  That was the voice of Pastor Traci Blackmon as she grasped the shoulders of Vonderrit Meyers, Sr., the father of a young black youth who had been shot six times in the back on the streets of St. Louis on October 8, 2014.  Mike continues the story:

I can still hear the Rev. Traci Blackmon’s voice ringing in my ears.

I can still see her face against his, hands on his shoulders, eyes piercing into his eyes.

It was near midnight on October 8, 2014, and a few hours before, 18-year old Vonderrit Myers, Jr. had been shot eight times – six in the back – and killed by an off-duty St. Louis City Police Officer. A crowd gathers at the scene and when they begin to move, the clergy who are there split up. Some go with the crowd. Others – Traci and I – we go with Vonderrit Myers, Sr. to the city morgue to be with him as he identifies the body of his son.

We stand outside for what seems like an eternity until the father emerges, the nightmare he had lived with since the day his son was born slowly becoming real. Head hanging to the ground, he almost whispers the words we already know:

“It’s him.”

And then… the pain begins to turn to rage. I could see it happen. He begins to fume … and tremble. What begins as a cry becomes a wail. What starts as a murmur grows into a shout as he says:

“It’s him. It’s my son. Somebody is going to pay for this. I’ve got a gun, and somebody is going to pay for him tonight!”

I am paralyzed. I cannot imagine his rage and know he has every right to it. I will not tell him to calm down. And… this is headed nowhere good. Not only do I not know what to do, I know whatever it is, I’m not the one who can do it.

And then Traci steps up to him. Traci steps up to him and grabs him by his shoulders, and puts her face right up to his face … her eyes to his eyes.
He is trembling. And she is trembling. And she holds him. And he looks at her and she says:

“I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. OK?”

He nods.

“Now I need you to feel me.”

His eyes are glued to hers.

“You have a job right now. You have to be a husband tonight. Your wife has lost her son, and she needs her husband. No one can do that but you. You have to go be with her. That’s where you have to be tonight. She needs you.”

“And tomorrow morning, I’m going to be at your house first thing. I’m going to be there and I’m going to stay there with you for as long as it takes.”

Tears fill the father’s eyes.
Tears fill Traci’s eyes.
And she says again.

“I feel you. Do you feel me?”

Vonderrit Myers, Sr. nods his head, and they embrace. And they cry. And then Vonderrit Myers, Sr. leaves the body of his son and goes to spend the longest night of his life at home with his wife.

And first thing the next morning, Traci is there. And she stays until they don’t need her to stay any more.[2]

To enter Jerusalem is to enter into any of our distressed urban areas, and pray to God, pray, like Pastor Traci, to have that mind of Christ in you.  That is where our Palm Sunday parade is leading the Church this morning and on any given morning.

In city after city, in village and township, Christ is crucified anew.  Crucified as an eighteen-year-old black kid gunned down on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri.  Crucified in the deadened hopes of the homeless man who sleeps on the back steps of our office in Claremont. Crucified in our hospital emergency rooms as doctors and nurses struggle to save the life of yet another overdose victim.

And what about the Hatfields and the McCoys?  Maybe time is the balm that heals all wounds.   In May 1944, an issue of Life magazine revisited the Hatfields and McCoys nearly fifty years after the violence that had consumed those two families.   In that spread was a photo of two young women, Shirley Hatfield and Frankie McCoy, working side by side together in a factory sewing uniforms for those who would in one short year be storming the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe – many of whom would lay down their lives in the ultimate sacrifice of self.

Pray have this mind in you. Dare to enter the pain of Christ crucified daily in a thousand different ways.  With gentle hands receive his body from the cross.  It’s tough stuff.  Not for sissies.  But dare enter this pain and you will find your life. You will find your Easter.

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11;
Luke 22:14-23:56

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
March 25, 2019

---

[1]  Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (San Francisco, Harper Collins, 2006).

[2] Mike Kinman, “The Power of Extravagant Love”, Sermon preached at All Saints, Pasadena, April 7, 2019.

As we were in the midst of the housing bubble and the era of highly inflated stock prices, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a most dour sort, in a speech on the economy referred to the danger of over-inflated values with the term, “irrational exuberance.”  Overly exuberant realtors and brokers were behaving in a most irrational way.  He was saying, “Let’s tamp it down, folks.”  Was he just being another “Debbie Downer?”  Or was he aware of something that those in the housing market and those on Wall Street didn’t know?

Well!   We all know what happened, when in 2008 our irrational exuberance caught up with us and the economy came crashing down about our ears.  In the blink of an eye, trillions of dollars of wealth was destroyed.  As usual, those suffering most were the poor and communities of color.  An entire mélange of bad actors was a part of the disaster.  Banks selling “liar mortgages,” buyers inflating their incomes, bond rating organizations inflating the value of worthless, bundled mortgages – triple A investment grade, my donkey!  You remember those NINJA loans?   No Income.  No Job. No Assets.  And certainly, no cop on the beat.  It was the worst of wild west economics. 

We certainly learned to be afraid of “irrational exuberance.”  And this goes for the church as well.  I’ve often counted on the church treasurer being our “Debbie Downer,” when it came to putting the budget together.  Let’s just play it safe and hoard up what little there is.  You never know!

In the gospel reading, Judas, the church treasurer, is shocked at Mary’s Irrational Exuberance as she pours a most costly ointment all over Jesus’ feet.  “My God, women!  What are you doing?  Don’t you realize that stuff is worth thousands of dollars an ounce?  Have a care!  We could have sold it and raised the money for the poor and needy.”  Judas has a point – not that Judas gave a fig about the poor and needy.  He only wanted the money for himself, the greedy wretch.  But one has to admit, what he counsels is sound economics.  You never know when a rainy day is coming.

Mary, on the other hand, is overcome by the joy of the Lord’s presence.  It just bubbles up out of her uncontrollably.  The words of Isaiah ring through her soul, “The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.” 

Remember how David Letterman used to boast, tongue-in-cheek, about his comedic ability, “Genius has no ‘off’ switch.”  Well that goes double for the abundance of God’s grace.  There is no “off switch.”  It’s all irrational exuberance.  All the time, twenty-four/seven.

It is the same irrational exuberance embodied in Isaiah’s proclamation, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.  Our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”  This is Mary as she wipes the ointment from Jesus’ feet with her hair.  Certainly not something done in polite company.  Definitely not done in an Episcopal church!

But our faith is a celebratory faith.  No Debbie Downers allowed.  So, bring on the irrational exuberance, or at least some modified exuberance.  Something we might call Hope.

I remember our early experiences as foster parents.  We had taken in charge the oldest daughter of close church friends.  The parents had divorced and the dad, being an alcoholic, showed no interest in supporting their five children.  We, being young and idealistic – read ‘stupid’ — took the oldest daughter, the child that caused the mother the most grief, and another family in the church, an older couple, took a very compliant younger boy.  Our two families agreed to care for the children for a year, giving the mother time to get her bearings.  The father was as useless as the proverbial bump on a log.

Well, to say that Nikki was a handful was an understatement.  Nikki had flunked nearly every single one of her courses in her freshman year of high school save one.  She got a “D-“ in PE.

She was sixteen going on twenty-four and her motto was, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”  We had to devise a dress code for school and church.  Her belly button could not be exposed at church and she could only wear clothing which exposed it at school once a week – hey, we were young and thought this a reasonable compromise.

Nikki assured us that her time with us would be an opportunity to start all over again.  We had high hopes she might find an outlet in some wholesome school club or in band.  Anything!  But it only took Nikki two weeks to find another new set of scuzzy friends, mostly boys up to no good.

We had told her that we wouldn’t be micro managing her school work.  It was up to her.  Unless we found out that her approach wasn’t working.  Well, it was by mid-semester that a flurry of purple notices began arriving in the mail.  Nikki was again headed for failure.  Homework was not turned in.  Test grades were abysmal, and unbeknown to us, she had begun skipping class. 

All this culminated with a meeting at the county courthouse with the probation officer – did I mention that Nikki had been on probation for stealing her boyfriend’s car.  Yes, at sixteen this was her claim to fame.  In a snit she took her boyfriend’s car, and he had reported it stolen.  So, there we were in the probation department office with the P.O. and the school vice principal for attendance, a Mr. Fackrat – you can imagine what the kids called him?  I definitely would have changed my name!

The law was laid down to Nikki.  If she cut one more class she would be going back to juvie.  I looked her in the eye and told her, that if she ended back in juvie, don’t call us.  We would figure that this is where she wanted to be.  There was a long silence in the room.  Slowly, Nikki nodded.  She had gotten the message loud and clear.

Now it wasn’t clear sailing after that, but Nikki never cut another hour of class.  Not only that, when the grades came out at the end of the semester, she had received an “A” in art.  It was the first “A” she had ever received in her entire life.  There was great rejoicing in our house.  A time for irrational exuberance if there ever was one.  Nikki was the most surprised of all.  And so were we.

At the end of her time with us, one of Jai’s friends had asked her how we thought we had done as foster parents.  Jai said that we thought we had done pretty well.  Nikki had had a “C” average in school.  She wasn’t on drugs – other than her cigarettes.  She wasn’t pregnant and she didn’t have anymore run-ins with the probation department or school authorities.  Pretty good, indeed!  Oh, yes – this was also my first church appointment.  What a year.

We and Millie and Ray, the other couple, with trepidation did what any church family would do.  We, in irrational exuberance, took Nikki’s family into the embrace of our arms and loved them.  In real and tangible ways.  It was most irrational, and had we been older we might not have been so exuberant.  We might have considered the real and unlikely possibility of success.  We might have put our treasurer’s green eyeshade on our generous impulse.  We might have just turned our backs and hoped that Nikki and the others might have had a good life – somehow.  Somewhere.

In the real world, the human results of God’s grace range from astounding to pretty good to sometimes, barely passable.  At a party in Lazarus’s house – you remember the guy Jesus brought out of the tomb, living, back alive again?  And now here at a feast for him, with Jesus present?  Certainly cause for irrational exuberance.  Grace with no “off switch.”  And, yet, John’s gospel places this story as a foretelling of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem. All coming to a bad end on a Good Friday.

Out of that ignominious death on a cross, God’s grace triumphed in the raising up of the Church – the Body of Christ in the world.  That is the Easter Story – as someone wrote, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”  That is our story.  Cause for irrational exuberance.  Or at least a bit of modified hope.

Last Sunday, after coffee fellowship, several of us took packets of California poppy seeds and with abandon spread them around our statue of St. Francis.  Not having the budget for water or for a full-time gardener, most of the front yard of the church has gone to weeds.  Yet in the midst of it all, we spread seeds of hope.  Seeds, we trust, will be an offering of beauty.  In, dare I say, irrational exuberance, we went out sowing in faith that a carpet of beautiful golden flowers will be a fitting sign of new Easter life here at St. Francis.

And new life does abound, right here in San Bernardino City.  We have several of our members signed up for Cursillo.  To boot, the Rectora of the whole shebang is one of our own.  We have a volunteer who has agreed to head up our proposed food pantry.  We have received a generous giant from the diocese to install a shower for the homeless.  And I have a newly refurbished office.  When Trent and Jennifer and their children head back to Texas, they will leave with the lived knowledge that at least one church really did welcome the homeless. 

And, given some of God’s generous rain, we will have a most beautiful golden carpet of poppies around St. Francis’ feet.

I have always insisted that we have a category of the church budget on the income side labeled “FAITH.”  It is placed there in trust that God will open doors unseen – doors invisible to the economic eye of the finance committee when they gather to put on their green eyeshades and reckon with the hard, cold reality of our present circumstances.  We need to allow for at least a smidgen of irrational exuberance, for that is what God’s grace is.  With St. Paul, we trust in things unseen, for hope we dared not even dream of. The same hope of those bedraggled Hebrew refugees returning from Babylonian captivity.

Each Sunday we gather around this table with love for one another, in hope that God’s irrational exuberance might anoint us from head to foot with the priceless ointment of grace, poured out to overflowing.

We leave the doors of this place in the same hope that we, let loose in the world, might be the sacramental embodiment of
God’s irrational exuberance.  Grace with no “off switch.”  Fine ointment to heal our bruised world.

And how did Nikki turn out?  The last we had heard was that after having a child out of wedlock, she had found a stable, responsible fellow who was the store manager at one of the chain drugstores up north, in Seattle, I believe. And married him.  And in my book that counts as an “A” grade.   

Yes, Easter is coming.  And with Mary and her jar of costly ointment, we best get ready for it.  Irrational exuberance is the order of the day.  Amen

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

When I was a young boy and I would insist that other kids were far better off than I – “Jimmy doesn’t have to mow the lawn. He doesn’t have to waste his whole Saturday.  How come I have to?  He has a much better family.”  My father would always say, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  I wasn’t sure, in my tender years, what that meant.  For one thing, I knew it meant that I would have to mow the grass and I better get to it.  Otherwise my whole Saturday would be shot.  The same with washing the car.  Only years later would I have a more adequate understanding of my father’s saying.

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; II Cor. 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3,11b-32
Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, 2019
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

The genius of Jesus is that he didn’t teach by the logic of rational argument.  No syllogisms for him.  He taught by story, sayings and by example.  Today, we get one of the most familiar stories in all of Scripture.  My friend, Paul Clasper, would say that if we had lost almost all of our written scriptural heritage but we had only a few bits left, this story being one of them, would have had enough to understand the whole thing.  We would have had enough to redeem the world.

So, we have this story of a father and two sons.  One son is sick and tired of mowing the lawn every Saturday.  He’s, like, “I’m outta here. If Jimmy doesn’t have to mow the lawn, why should I?  It’s stupid.”  So, he goes to his father and demands that he give him his half of the livelihood.  And he will just leave, thank you.  So, the father, in sadness hands him a bag of coins, half of the inheritance and bids the younger son farewell.  As the boy disappears down the road, a tear rolls down the father’s cheek.

The boy, gleefully heads off to big city where he will never have to mow the grass.  In fact, he will never have anymore irksome chores.  He heads off to a mythical far country where every day is nothing but a big party – just like those commercials for Carnival Cruises, or the excitement of a Morongo Valley Casino.  No one mows the lawn as far as he can see.  For this kid, the whole world is a twenty-four/seven party.  He’s the high roller at the table.  Glamorous women cluster around him and the action is hot. 

But as the days roll on, like the die at the craps table, his bag of coins isn’t so full anymore.  As he gets down to the nubbins, he begins to wonder why he’s always the one having to buy the beer.  Where are those other Big-Time Spenders?  In a flash, he’s out of chips.  Outta money.  Outta luck.  The barkeep is now insisting the tab be paid.  And all the beautiful women are standing around some other guy.

As hunger settles in and he wakes stiff and cold on a park bench, it’s beginning to dawn on him – something his father said about the grass on the other side of the fence.  He comes to his senses in a far country that is cold and inhospitable, the faint glow of flashing neon a few blocks away.  A far country that is little better than death itself.  Diving through Dumpsters behind the casino restaurant, all he ends up with is stale, dried-out, tough pizza crusts and food poisoning.  Retching in the weeds, it dawns on him that even the lowliest of his father’s servants had it better than this.

He comes to himself in a far country and doesn’t like what he is finding.  All is desolation and abandonment.

In America, we now find ourselves in a Far Country, a country that many of us don’t recognize.

The opioid crisis ravaging our nation is certainly desolation and abandonment.  Addiction is a very far country.  We have abandoned our most vulnerable to the tender mercies of Perdue Chemical and their ilk.  Last year we had some forty-seven thousand deaths from opioid overdose, though various stats give somewhat different numbers – but it’s in that ballpark.  More than all the years of the entire Vietnam War.

I heard from an Episcopal colleague in West Virginia that Bishop Mike Klusmeyer had called all the West Virginia clergy and laity together for a conference on opioids.  He has mandated that every parish will have the antidote to opioids, Naltrexone, on site with some people in each congregation trained to administer it.  It will stop an overdose cold in its tracks.  Instantly.

Now, here comes that other brother, you know the responsible one.  The older one who always did his chores without complaint.  Yeah, the one who was always willing to step in and mow the damn grass and do whatever.  Mr. Responsibility.  If we’re honest with ourselves, there’s a bit of that stuffed-shirt, self-righteous brother in each of us.  I know that brother lurks in me.  That’s right – I am the older brother.  And I’m sure my brother Tom would say at times I could be a real jerk.

In the Episcopal clergy, I discovered we had a number of those older brothers who stayed home and mowed the grass.  Now what these “jerks” said was, “Bishop, why should we bother?  If we’re going to save them from this one-time overdose, won’t they just go out and do the same thing all over again?  Why bother?  We’re just wasting our time.”  Classic, Blame the Victim.  Older brother types can really be insufferable. Why save them?   Really!?  What part of the gospel didn’t you understand?

Yet Today, Tomorrow, and the Next Day

Year C, 2nd Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27:10-18;
Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

Preached March 17, 2019

St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

The Rev. John C. Forney

The other day over coffee and donuts an old friend brought up some of his recent theological explorations.  I’ll call him Sam to protect the innocent and the confused.  Sam mentioned a number of people he was reading or had looked into.  He found it all very confusing and disturbing.  My take on Sam’s theological inquiry was that it was interesting, and certainly such armchair discussions are a pleasant diversion, but I didn’t find that they got me much of anywhere.  I said that as an Episcopalian (he was one also), I believed that theology should be sacramental if it is worth considering.

You remember what a sacrament is.  It’s the visible sign of an unseen grace, of an unseen mystery.  Any theology worth its salt should manifest in some way that the Power which moves us all should bring about a greater expression of the kingdom of God in the visible world.  It should manifest itself in changed lives, a greater and a more tender mercy. 

Karl Barth did indeed write many volumes of Church Dogmatics.  Ponderous, indeed.  Yet Karl Barth had a ministry within the jail of his city.  To my mind, his outreach to some of society’s most misfortunate validated his theology. 

There’s the story about Karl Barth’s entrance into heaven.  Upon his arrival he notices a huge, a ginormous crowd, awaiting his arrival.  Barth asks if all this hoo-ha is in recognition of his massive theological production.  “Oh no,” the MC says.  “We forgave you that long ago.”  “No,” she said.  “We are here in recognition of the countless hours you spent with the worst of the worst – to honor the sermons you gave Sunday after Sunday, and the comfort you provided over the years to the inmates in Basel Prison.” 

To sum up: What does your theology lead you to do for your sisters and brothers, for our Mother Earth?  If nothing, it’s all worthless fluff.  Even if there are fourteen or fifteen volumes of it.

“Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today, tomorrow and the next day…”  This is what Jesus told his hostile interlocutors.  You go tell that old fox Herod that this is my business.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day…”

And these words of Jesus must also be our mindset.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day…”  we must be about the business of what my friend Ed Bacon calls, “Turning the human race into the human family.”  The kindom of God is the business of Christians every day.  It’s about wholeness and restoration.  Irenaeus tells us that the “glory of God is a man, is a woman, is a people fully alive.”  Yes, I’ve expanded his thought here.  But it comports with the meaning.

Note, I said “kindom of God.”  That’s because in the mind of Christ we are all kin to one another. 

Indeed, we are all kin one to another.  That is why the blasé, dismissive attitude of our president towards this week’s killings in New Zealand I find so abhorrent.  The position of the new – maybe it’s not so new after all – white nationalism that we must fear and demonize all those different from ourselves is tearing at the fabric of our nation.  No, Donald Trump did not pull the trigger in a mosque in New Zealand.  A deranged and twisted mind did that.  But as Rabbi Chuck Diamond of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh – you remember, the place of that terrible massacre of innocent Jewish worshippers — insists, “Words matter.”  To Trump’s assertion that he didn’t know enough to comment, again the rabbi counters, “You know enough to know it’s wrong.”

Today, tomorrow and the next day we are called to stand for what is right and to call “wrong” what it is, flat out “wrong.”  Words do matter, Mr. President.

When our president opines in a freewheeling, unscripted moment, “I think Islam hates us.  There’s something, something there… a tremendous hatred of us.  There’s unbelievable hatred of us.” – that is when Christians should have been crying to the heavens, “NO, NO, NO.  This is not America!  This is not who we are as people of faith. This is not what Jesus teaches.”

This president has tapped into a global market for hatred.  A market spawned and fed by the worst of the internet. 

Today, tomorrow and the next day — that is the time for our witness to what we believe in the Jesus movement and what we’re about.

Chris Matthews, good Catholic that he is, brought on his Hardball program Friday those of other faiths to raise a common voice of denunciation.

Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father, the Muslim whose son was killed in Iraq, set the record straight.  “The shooter in his manifesto wrote, ‘Trump is the symbol of a renewed white identity and common purpose.’”  Yes, Mr. President, words do matter.  Your words matter.  Mr. Khan, speaking of Trump’s hateful rhetoric, continued, “How wrong he is.  There are over ten thousand Muslim soldiers serving in the United States Army that have taken the oath to defend the Constitution and this country…How wrong he is…like on every issue.  This is a politically expedient person.  He is a ship without rudder.  That is why we see all these investigations.  My only concern is how would we recover from this hate and division?”  Chris Matthews’ answer was, “Well, we’re talking about it.”

That’s where we all must start.  We must be talking about it.  Today, Tomorrow and the next day.  And whoever that “Fox” may be, whatever powers and principalities that pejorative stands for, we Christians must be in the public square standing for what is right. Otherwise we’ll have lost our saltiness.  Good for nothing but…well, we probably won’t be tramped underfoot, we’ll just be ignored.

Today, tomorrow and the next day, whether it is with a beaten traveler by the side of a road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho or at the shore of a Galilean lake, we are called to be a transformational people. Listen again to St. Paul:

Ever dying, here we are alive. Called nobodies, yet we are ever in the public eye.  Though we have nothing with which to bless ourselves, yet we bless many others with true riches.  Called poor, yet we possess everything worth having.”[1]

Today, tomorrow and the next day, here we are alive, blessing others with true riches.  And so, we begin the conversation.  In church.  In the supermarket checkout line.  And in our legislatures.  Silence is not golden.  Silence is death. 

The day after I had left West Virginia, a company began dismantling the Weirton Steel Mill, about twelve miles up the road from where I had been staying.  Work was proceeding slowly but safely until someone got a “bright idea.”  Now whenever someone on my construction crew got a “bright idea,” I would tell the crew to consider just one question, a question fraught with potential legal and economic implications.  The question?  The question was: “What could possibly go wrong?”

Apparently, no one ever asked that question in Weirton at the worksite, or if it had been asked, no one carefully considered the possible answers.  The “bright idea” was, why don’t we just blow it up?  Right!  Blow up the whole thing! And I’m thinking, “Now, what could possibly go wrong?  Sure, blow it up.  And maybe half the town?”

As a monstrous dust cloud began to subside, it became clear that plenty had gone wrong.  For blocks around, windows were shattered and houses were knocked off their foundations.  Worse yet, this cloud was potentially full of all sort of toxins and asbestos and God only knew what else.  Houses, lawns playgrounds were covered by the soot.  It was something out of 9/11 all over again.

As I scrolled down through some of the comments that followed the online news article itself, what surprised me was the anger directed against those who complained, or sent off air samples to the Feds to be analyzed for the sort of stuff that could kill a person.  Don’t say anything.  It will make our president and our town look bad.  It will get us a bad reputation.  Never mind the children and old people.  Never mind those most vulnerable to any released contaminants.

Today, tomorrow and the next day Christians are called to put health and public safety first over the protection of some idiot with a “bright idea” that may have destroyed several city blocks and ruined the health of hundreds.  Christians are called to raise a ruckus when well-being is at stake.  No matter whose reputation might be damaged.

While you and I are compelled to raise a ruckus, we are, more than that, called to raise hope and possibility.  Healing is always the order of the day.  We’re here to more than just point out the problem.  We’re here to be a solution, or at least part of a solution.  That’s what a whole lot of Christians and other people of faith — and also some of no faith — did in Pomona several weeks ago.  The “Pomona Reawakening Conference” brought many residents of Pomona and several surrounding cities together to think about what “Engaged Compassion” might mean for a city.  Think about our schools, employment, policing, the environment, city services, clean neighborhoods, safety. 

Well, folks did think about such.  And this original conference has grown legs.  My good friend Dick put up with more dysfunction, distraction by shiny objects and the chasing after rabbits to get this thing organized – well, let me just say – this project would have tried the patience of a saint!  Meeting after planning meeting, Dick was lucky if even two or three in any group would have been at the previous planning meeting.  Or any other planning meeting, for that matter!  Yes, today, tomorrow and the next day…Dick kept at it.  And the results, when it all came together at Temple Beth Israel on a cold Saturday morning, were absolutely heartwarming.  Listening to the two keynote speakers – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  The workshops following lunch propelled action.  And from that beginning has come the continued gathering of a bunch of folks bent on the renewal of that city through the ways of engaged compassion.  The thing has absolutely grown legs.  All key players are now engaged.  This common effort is a joy to behold.

This is the sort of work, today, tomorrow and the next day, that brings blessing to our living.  In it Christ is to be found.  This Lent, today, tomorrow and the next day…let us be in the thick of God’s action for restoration and wholeness.

As I told my younger son who had the idea of “doing something” about opioid addiction in West Virginia, “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into — a most fine, godly mess.”  And that, my friends, is our summons.  To find, or create fine, godly messes that bring true riches and blessing.  Today, tomorrow and the next day.   Amen.

---

[1] The New Testament in Modern English, J.B Phillips 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. II Cor. 6:9-10.